It has been reported that approximately 11,500 civilians will be furloughed from Hill AFB. That cannot help the depression in Davis County. This happens at a time that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch and Utah Rep. Howard Stephenson, R-Salt Lake City argue that we should bring in more immigrants for the 11,500 to compete with in finding new jobs, or even part-time jobs to make ends meet.

Hatch and Stephenson have a euphemism for this immigrant competition: highly skilled foreign workers. When Hatch gets them here, often they do not speak the language so we pay for the classes to teach them how to speak English. Those of us already here pay for the immigrant’s medical bills; we pay for their education and our social service systems of increased workload, as often the immigrants past lifestyles are not compatible with the lifestyle and culture here on things such as how the immigrant treats his wife, daughters and how the immigrant parents teach their children.

Stephenson argues that this can be done without tax dollars. You can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. There is no free lunch in this world and we will pay for the immigrants that Hatch and Stephenson want to bring here, highly skilled or not.

Yes, we will benefit from training more people of all ages in science, technology, math and engineering. Hatch and Stephenson have been in office too long; they were the ones who were funding or not funding our schools to do just that. If they did not accomplish that and we do not have enough highly skilled workers in the U.S., Hatch and Stephenson are responsible.

We don’t need more competition for the jobs in the U.S. and Davis County С we need Hatch and Stephenson to invest more in training those that are already here.